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In response to the use of languages in IC posts, I can offer an example of what I prefer to do that may also appeal to someone else;

When my character is speaking in another language, which is often*, I emote that s/he is doing so without actually listing what s/he is saying, especially in mixed company or around characters s/he has not yet met. I then ask in Tells if a particular character knows X language that my character is speaking and if so, I then tell them what was said. If no one present speaks the language my character is speaking in, I simply continue to emote that s/he speaks in a language foreign to them, noting what language it is occasionally so that new arrivals to the scene or passing through have an opportunity to recognize it or state that their character understands what it being said.

So far, I have not been in a situation where a given character is interacting with a large number of characters, half of whom do understand and half of whom don't. In a larger capacity, this style may break down, but I have yet to have issue with it. In situations where the majority understand the language, I post what s/he is saying - otherwise, I base it on who s/he is speaking to at the time; posting what s/he is saying in public channel to the character being addressed, emoting that s/he is speaking a foreign language if s/he addresses a character that doesn't.

I find that this style reduces subconscious metagaming in the form of knowing what a character is saying when the other character does not understand the language. Emotion and intention can be conveyed through emotes of tone and similar; but I work on the premise that when listening to a native speaker of a language I do not understand casually chatting with someone else, I have absolutely no idea what they are saying and could rarely to never even make a guess without some familiarity with the language in question. I apply this to my characters, and it suits me well.

* Common is trade language, and while capable of conveying complex or eloquent thoughts, it is not designed for casual conversation if there is the option of speaking a regional/native language with someone, IMO. i.e., Elves speak Elven instead of Common with each other even in mixed company unless they deliberately mean to include those nearby who do not understand Elven. If the Elves are from the Dalelands or High Forest, they may also speak in Chondathan, which is more widely known by other races in those (and other) regions and thus an excellent "English" to default to, rather than Common. It isn't a matter of exclusion, but communicative comfort; in general, I believe people prefer to speak their mother tongue amongst each other.

There seem to be a number of explanations for the Common tongue; I have seen no concrete dedication to any of these by Amia

TormakSaber wrote:

Quote:

The DMFI Wand Package contains language widgets and scripts to implement additional/custom languages. And honestly I'd be quite happy to see a translation system in place and can speak quite well of experience with the DMFI system, both from the perspective of a developer and a player.

We used to use DMFI on Amia. Compared to what we have now the DMFI is stone age, laggy, and not organized at all. In fact I'd sooner see Disco package up what we got and sell it as DMFI 2.0 because it takes up less space ina MD's nventory and it about fifty times awesome.

The language stuff involves making follower PCs and the "languages" are nothing but garbled ciphered english made to look thematically like the language it's supposed to represent. Lots of vowels for Elven and Fey, lots of hard x's, v's, and z's for draconic, etc.

To mention the first post: Drow is separate from Elven, as far as Amia is concerned, just like Common and Undercommon are different.

Naturally languages as presented thus far are ciphers- to ask for a real translation engine that could handle not only the languages but the unique grammar, syntax, and differences in meaning that are carried with them is asking for something that simply can't be done. Nor can any engine handle typos or improperly used words. Rather, the only reasonable option for actual languages is one that either outputs a string of ciphered garbage or "[Elven] . . ." and delivers the text directly to players with the appropriate languages enabled.

This could be handled at login for racial languages, but it'd be a bit of a pain for other languages that aren't racially allotted to the PC. DMFI wasn't perfect by any means, but it wasn't bad- and I'd welcome a better system if there is one. But the discussion's more one on the feasibility and functionality now rather than the merits of using it, since Disco has already stated that barrier-creating things are bad.

More on-topic, I'd submit that the language-handling method as it stands is, as Lizzie put it, "bicker-bait". Merely slapping [Elven] before your text is over-inclusive in that it brings in people who shouldn't know what's being said anyway. On the other hand, self-translation, party chat, tells, or code are under-inclusive- you're not giving people who would understand the language the chance they should have to hear and react to it. While I do appreciate Disco's stance of

Dev Disco wrote:

I don't think we should add ways of excluding other players.

I believe that the only people who would be excluded by a filtering mechanism (or should be) are those who shouldn't be included by the fact that they don't know the language being spoken in the first place. If these people are included, what possible positive RP result could be reached? It's feasible that it might show an instance of rulebreaking that could be reported, but that's more or less the only positive I get out of it. Rather, from what I see there's a lot of chafing because certain persons are incapable of accepting that their character cannot speak or understand everything and the current stance simply gives them another way to bunny themselves as more than they really are. In fact, I see no IC result that could occur without the players speaking the language actually ignoring the fact that the other character just understood something he had no way of understanding.

Am I insane or does that feel like it only really encourages bad RP by allowing bunnying of languages?

If I'm wrong I'm more than happy to discuss why that is.

Ace of Swords wrote:

... I do appreciate Disco's stance of

Dev Disco wrote:

I don't think we should add ways of excluding other players.

Not that this is to my original question...

But, so do I. I guess, however, I'd make the distinction that some sort of language filter would not technically enable players to exclude other players; it would enable characters to exclude other characters.

I suppose it's easy to consider that to be a distinction without a difference, but I'd argue that while it's never a good idea for a player to be excluded from fun RP, characters often desire IC to convey info to each other on the down-low, and if there were no game mechanics in the way, then switching languages would probably be the most likely way of doing it. I'm of the general opinion that characters should be able to do whatever there's no IC reason for them not to do... the reasons languages are a thorny question are 100% OOC.

Having read the past page and a bit, I must say no new argument has been presented for implementing random gibberish that can only be translated by a small sector of the playerbase. I'm firmly against it, for reasons that have been given in the past hundred threads like this. Let's face it, if someone is going to metagame, they're going to metagame and they're the sort of people you don't want to RP with.

Yurell wrote:

Having read the past page and a bit, I must say no new argument has been presented for implementing random gibberish that can only be translated by a small sector of the playerbase. I'm firmly against it, for reasons that have been given in the past hundred threads like this. Let's face it, if someone is going to metagame, they're going to metagame and they're the sort of people you don't want to RP with.

wouldn't that "Small sector of the player base" be the ...people who should legitimately know the language and thus have the ability to translate it?

Okay, there are several points of contention that are of interest to me in this thread. First and foremost, those language ciphers are crap. I used to be on board with implementing them, but then I discovered how much they spam the DM's and how they don't actually have any real pattern to them.

Secondly, the languages your character knows should make sense. Unfortunately, most people want to be "in" on everything that everyone's saying and thus comes your Min-Max Fighter with an INT of 8 who knows every language in the whole of Fearun. That kind of action is quite lame.

I'll add that Amia is not like the rest of the planet. It's concentration of adventurers is quite dense and I'd wager probably has the highest population of planetouched and drow of damned near anywhere else. This would make knowing Infernal, Drow, Celestial, etc. a lot easier if you were raised there. However, it seems that a lot of characters come from other lands and through their travels, end up on Amia. If your character comes from a distant, remote land with a tradition of poorly educated people.... how does s/he know strange and relatively obscure languages?

I would say just use common sense.... but common sense is anything but common.

I present it very simply: To have languages the way you want them, every single PC in the server would be stuck with a "follower" NPC with all it s scripts, effects on lag and language bugginess. It spams every DM with gibberish when used and spams players with long text not only in their message box but the combat box too. In a server as big as ours is, and as laggy as we already get sometimes, I think taking things into consideration on lag basis is an impressive argument to no do it.

In the end I do agree with Disco, and having used the language thingies, never felt it was that big of an improvement to roleplay.

brooksthegreat wrote:

Yurell wrote:

Having read the past page and a bit, I must say no new argument has been presented for implementing random gibberish that can only be translated by a small sector of the playerbase. I'm firmly against it, for reasons that have been given in the past hundred threads like this. Let's face it, if someone is going to metagame, they're going to metagame and they're the sort of people you don't want to RP with.

wouldn't that "Small sector of the player base" be the ...people who should legitimately know the language and thus have the ability to translate it?

Depends on how you define 'legitimately'. And even beyond having to implement a very tight rule on languages, no doubt breaking a lot of RP from people who legitimately learned languages ICly, it won't even give anyone else the language, just a random assay of gibberish. Random gibberish, I might add, that creates lag.
Beyond that, it would only be used as a means of exclusive RP. As it stands at least you, the player, can read what is said and still enjoy the RP, even if your character can't. With random gibberish filling up your screen, no way to tell what tone is being used (because you can't emote without switching languages back and forth), it's much more likely to be boring, tedious and make you wish to leave.

The cost of implementing this far outweighs the benefits gained from doing so. For more detailed answers, simply because they're better than what I can present, click on any one of the dozens of threads addressing this subject that seem to come up on a quarterly basis.

I dont really see the point in Languages.

I mean, yeah, little bit of flavour. But its a bit pointless, IMO.

ICly, youre never going to say something in the presence of someone in another language, and assume the other party wont understand it. In RL, I wouldn't go up to any guy in the street and call him one of the various dirty words I looked up in the German Dictionary at school, for all I know he's the son of the German Ambassador. Its the same IG. Language knowledge is so widespread - particularly among Wizards - it all seems a futile gesture to me, its not something I'd bother with. And, OOCly its a huge can of worms, speaking in tags and expecting the other players to ignore it. Not always going to happen. The whole concept just doesnt seem with the fuss. Meh, just speak common, and forget other languages exist. And If you want to hide your words, speak in code, which is much more fun for all concerned. IMO.

My other point on Languages? Speaking Draconic, without a forked tongue? Yeah, thats not at all wierd.

Added to that - what is the point of making this an English-speaking server if we're going to let people ply gibberish anyway? I know I'd much rather watch elves converse in French than in random characters.

As to your original question, this is what I do: Common + racial languages + INT bonus languages as Colapops suggests.

Next I would like to encourage you not to let one bad apple spoil your day. If your drow knows elven, who’s to say it wasn’t learned from a slave or that your Ilharess demanded that you know elven to be able to translate so she didn't have to speak it?

What I do is take the time to study and learn extra languages. It took several months for one of my characters to learn another language. The RP was fun.

I would encourage others not to automatically understand everything either. I have a drow who doesn’t know common, isn’t interested in knowing common and has had some excellent RP when what’s being said is “translated”. I emote tone of voice cues for those who don’t know the language being spoken. And if there's an accent -- my dragonkin speaks draconic but it comes out musical instead of gruff leading to some misprounciations even though it's the language she knows best.

I don’t need to understand what’s being communicated to enjoy the RP. I recall the Bloodbeards handsigning to each other in Tarkuul and ROFL the entire time. My character didn’t understand a bit of what they were communicating but as a player it is still one of my favorite times of RP.

I see other languages as adding to the immersion of the RP. It's an opportunity to emote more, which can be a lot of fun.

I was going to say something but, used sparringly this is awesome, and thats all I have to say.

I get the impression the people thinking we know klingon or some rubbish think this happens 24/7 and are freaking out.

I find being around characters that speak almost exclusively in elvish or drow or draconic boring with tags, let alone with gibberish.

I used to have a character of mine be a smartarse when in earshot of people that were rudely talking in a foreign tongue. He'd say "Oh, by the way, is now a good time to mention I speak [X] pretty fluently?"

Now, the only languages he could speak were Chultan and Common, but it's a basic fact of human behaviour that you don't do that unless you want to bitch about folk in front of their face.

He never knew ICly what had been said, but the effects were quite amusing. I expect the folk there thought I was a metagaming foolio for claiming all these obscure languages, but even identifying [X] was guesswork on his part. Not exactly difficult guesswork most of the time, but he was caught out a few times by, for example wrongly guessing two tiefs were speaking Infernal when it was actually Draconic.

when dill speaks in goblin ive started tom ake her spell correctl such as in common "yuzza want to buy this?"
then in goblin "do you want to buy this?"
think it jsut adds the extra good tone and emphisises
that it wasnt at all easy to learn.

I think that makes sense - when in goblin with a goblin accent it's going to look like Common with a 'Common' accent - that is, straight English.

gobo, dwarvern, kobold, common, half orc and pirate are all semi-english.

elven drac abysall etc are not

ed: though out of nessecity with text they all use the english alphabet, sometimes adding thÉsÉ accÉnts.

Glyph wrote:

half orc

Half orcs have their own language?

'uh 'mash yo's gobo's to p'uwp.

in short no but yes.

Glyph wrote:

gobo, dwarvern, kobold, common, half orc and pirate are all semi-english.

elven drac abysall etc are not

ed: though out of nessecity with text they all use the english alphabet, sometimes adding thÉsÉ accÉnts.

I always imagined the less intelligent creatures speaking a pidgin dialect. I've seen it used before and it's really rather fascinating, and would explain their ability to communicate with people who speak other languages despite being functional morons.

Last edited by Glyph on Wed, Jul 28 2010, 18:20 PM, edited 2 times in total.

saying that, i've never seen a kobold speak drac yet which is a perfectly plausible thing. i've also never seen "[thieves can't] over there by the docks" for example though I would imagine they do that through ICly tells to prevent metagaming

ed: nope not once. (to the following post.)

You've never seen a kobold speak draconic? I've yet to see a [real] kobold that doesn't.

_Cairn Reborn_ wrote:

Glyph wrote:

half orc

Half orcs have their own language?

No.

My characters don't speak cant because everyone and their mother seems to know it, and any other language my character speaks.

Selvec Darkon wrote:

My characters don't speak cant because everyone and their mother seems to know it, and any other language my character speaks.

See, this is exactly the sort of complaint my original question was intended to address.

The ability to speak an unusual language, or to speak to others of your race in your mother tongue, can be a useful RP device, sort of a back-door means of working towards establishing a character's more important characteristics... and it's entirely neutered in Amia, because everyone seems to speak everything, and there's apparently no non-sucky mechanic for preventing everyone from speaking everything. So I guess my question has been answered... the only viable solution to the problem (if you agree that it's a problem) is to trust the honor system, which, as we know, is basically no solution at all. -sadface-

I could learn cockney and speak that? (instead of thieves cant =) )

Yeah I guess honesty is the only way , Lizzie.. just play with honest players.

All my characters currently only speak Common.. one of my characters can understand a bit of Draconic but not so much speak it and is seeking to be taught and trying to learn it IC.. and yes it is possible to understand more that you can speak IRL so That's how I am personally playing it up in game. Yes she has has enough lore ,lineage, etc to say- hey I know this language fluently but this is just how I choose to play because one doesn't magically know a language unless they are around the language being spoken enough or study it.

why not just add each language as an item that can be used that does nothing but displays 'xyz uses Draconic' as a proof your character is able to speak the language. Then make these tokens given out by dms when sufficient rp has been shown to know the language?

Vhalus_VoA wrote:

why not just add each language as an item that can be used that does nothing but displays 'xyz uses Draconic' as a proof your character is able to speak the language. Then make these tokens given out by dms when sufficient rp has been shown to know the language?

1. It's an extra item cluttering up your inventory and using space
2. It would be a bugger to hand out
3. It would require solid rules on known languages
4. How would it be handed out for languages already known? Would there need to be retconning?
5. When you first start your character, will there be a script to give the languages? If so, will there be a complete list of languages to choose from, or will it be another timesink for DMs?
6. If the latter for #5, what happens to those people in the wrong timezones? Do they just not speak?

I much prefer the current system - sure, there are twits that will exploit the system, there always are, but all in all it works. The system is flexible and in general it works.

well I guess I just disagree that it works as long as there are people running around speaking draconic because they consider it useful without any backstory or rp into how they acquired it.

Vhalus_VoA wrote:

well I guess I just disagree that it works as long as there are people running around speaking draconic because they consider it useful without any backstory or rp into how they acquired it.

I think that would work if that was the only problem. In my ever-so-humble, the problem is not that people are selecting languages which are unreasonable for them to be able to speak; the problem is that people are not pre-selecting any languages at all. Then, whenever they encounter anyone speaking in any language that isn't Common, they all of a sudden sprout the retroactive ability to have been able to speak that language all along.

Vhalus_VoA wrote:

well I guess I just disagree that it works as long as there are people running around speaking draconic because they consider it useful without any backstory or rp into how they acquired it.

Many people don't think of a backstory of why they're even on the isle, let alone stuff like that. My own character's background is documented because I like that sort of thing, while others feel it restricts their RP.

Yurell wrote:

Vhalus_VoA wrote:

why not just add each language as an item that can be used that does nothing but displays 'xyz uses Draconic' as a proof your character is able to speak the language. Then make these tokens given out by dms when sufficient rp has been shown to know the language?

1. It's an extra item cluttering up your inventory and using space
2. It would be a bugger to hand out
3. It would require solid rules on known languages
4. How would it be handed out for languages already known? Would there need to be retconning?
5. When you first start your character, will there be a script to give the languages? If so, will there be a complete list of languages to choose from, or will it be another timesink for DMs?
6. If the latter for #5, what happens to those people in the wrong timezones? Do they just not speak?

I'm sure there's a way to store the list on your PC key and access spoken languages through a dialogue box in the rest menu or something, so there would be no need to have an extra item in your inventory. Your character would automatically get it's racial languages and common/undercommon and then there would have to be some sort of way to do a selection based on INT on creation... after that point, you'd have to have a DM add additional languages based off of RP.

All in all, it's an interesting idea. The only difficult part would be figuring out how to implement it for already existing characters.

Heres the thing, languages are viable if you actually type things out in their languages. For example, Thieves Cant is infact a mix of spoken words and body language. So its not to hard to talk in, as long as the other person knows what is being said.

The problem that arises is that the other person may not know. So you PM them a translation. However, this alienates potential evaesdroppers who also may not know this language, because they can't be bothered. This means your placing an OOC block to IC RP. They can't exactly PM you as then you know someone is listening, and while you may be a nice RPer and not metagame the fact, there are others who will not be so nice.

Language systems tend to think that the only two possibilities of one's understanding of a language are "Fluent" or "Not fluent".

If I'm not mistaken, this is the main problem with the language system:

Evil guys: [drow] Everyone, let's lure these guys into a trap.
Dwarven paladin: They're trying to lure us into a trap!
Evil guys: ... [abyssal] Careful, he speaks drow. Kill the mage first!
Dwarven paladin: They're after the mage!
Evil guys:... [infernal] Can you believe this sonofa?
Dwarven paladin: Who are you calling a sonofa?

A very simple solution to this would just be to ask people to list their languages in their bio. I don't think people would actually have the balls to have a huge long list without justification. Obviously, it brings in the other problem of metagaming what languages people do and don't know. I am not sure whether this would be a worse problem or not than the one we have now. As a fix, it is a loose bandage at best, but it does have the advantage of being made of very cheap cloth.

solution to all your problems, the whisper tab =)

also I enjoyed speaking actual elven ingame today with no oocly complaint

still waiting for the oppourtunity to say "Amin feuya ten' lle, ungol sereg' per brevada" though >=')

(you disgust me spider blood half breed

)

ed: example, " I must go now, namaríe [elven for] "farewell" " its not so bad, and I know all of 6 phrases so im not overdoing it as such.

Didi wrote:

A very simple solution to this would just be to ask people to list their languages in their bio.

This had occurred to me as well, but then I pondered that about half of Amia's player base can't even be bothered to include a bio in their bio. So... meh.

just start speaking [wazjib] and see if they catch on or copy you

rest assured my character has a high enough int to know the languages hes speaking, and I wrote them down pre-amia.

Lizzie wrote:

Didi wrote:

A very simple solution to this would just be to ask people to list their languages in their bio.

This had occurred to me as well, but then I pondered that about half of Amia's player base can't even be bothered to include a bio in their bio. So... meh.

oh that's one of the things that amuses me on this server. the people who's bio is some equivilent of "RP to find out.. don't metagame"

like really? knowing your characters physical appearance if you're standing there for me to look at is metagaming?

if your polymorphed and it says you have a beard yea thats metagaming.

Yurell wrote:

Many people don't think of a backstory of why they're even on the isle, let alone stuff like that. My own character's background is documented because I like that sort of thing, while others feel it restricts their RP.

This. When I created Spooks, I had no concept in mind other than "CN kobold magic-user." All my characters have a multiple choice past. It's more fun to make it up as I go along than to have a rigid concept that must be adhered to.

As for languages, I wrote a list of the languages my character speaks. Having high INT and high Lore skill helps.

I have a similar method, there is a 2/3 year ICly gap in my backstory I am choosing to remain open for now =) other than a few minor details

Lesquille wrote:

Yurell wrote:

Many people don't think of a backstory of why they're even on the isle, let alone stuff like that. My own character's background is documented because I like that sort of thing, while others feel it restricts their RP.

This. When I created Spooks, I had no concept in mind other than "CN kobold magic-user." All my characters have a multiple choice past. It's more fun to make it up as I go along than to have a rigid concept that must be adhered to.

As for languages, I wrote a list of the languages my character speaks. Having high INT and high Lore skill helps.

I kind of do this, but my characters have a very concrete but vague past. I put their information in their journal notes so I can remember it. Arkady's got her languages (Common, Celestial, Elven, Draconic) and her background and such in there, as well as poems/riddles/songs, catchphrases, etc.

Languages?

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